David Himmelstein

Recent Articles

D espite a once-in-a-generation opportunity, the Clintons are poised to slam the door on single payer national health insurance and embrace a corporate welfare approach with the oxymoronic name: "Managed Competition." Managed Competition would: Use tax penalties to push all but the wealthy into stripped down, basic group health plans. Deprive most patients of the right to choose their own doctor and hospital, completing the transformation of American medicine from one-on-one doctor-patient relationships to a medical system controlled by enormous corporate bureaucracies. Assure a multi-tiered health care system, separate and unequal. Perpetuate the private health insurance industry, the principal cause of the crisis Fail to contain costs. Originally proposed by Stanford Business Professor Alain Enthoven, versions of Managed Competition have been endorsed by Bill Clinton, George Bush, the New York Times (in no less than 23 editorials), several business and insurance organizations, the...